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Updated: May 4, 2025
The corvette was now abreast of the Chilian ship, and as she drew level she let fly her whole broadside, consisting of one 100- pounder, one 70-pounder, and six 40-pounders, at the devoted gunboat. The effect was as though a hurricane of fire and steel had broken loose aboard the Covadonga.
The day following the joint adventure of Douglas and Montt in Antofagasta a telegram arrived for the skipper of the Covadonga, ordering him to leave the place immediately, and rejoin the flag at Valparaiso without delay. All shore leave was accordingly stopped, and that same evening the gunboat raised her anchor and steamed out of Chimba Bay, on her way to the headquarters port.
Torpedo destroyer Audaz. Armed merchantman Isla de Pany, equipped with two guns, and carrying stores and a few troops. Auxiliary cruiser Rapido, equipped with twelve guns. Steamship Colon, unarmed and with no troops. Torpedo destroyer Proserpina. Torpedo-boat destroyer Osada. Transport Covadonga, carrying no guns. Collier San Francisco. June 27.
He was the best personification of his own race, the Spanish race, which made him the brother of Morillo, Latorre and Rodil, a race which lives in twenty nations of the earth and in whose memory all names now stand equal, if they represent the same principles, whether they were written in Covadonga or Carabobo, by the sword of Pelayo or by the sword of Bolivar.
He now suddenly changed his course from south to south-south-east and steered straight for the Covadonga, which was within a hundred yards of the beach, and had herself just touched a rock in her passage over it. But alas for the Peruvian, she missed her blow, and struck immediately upon the rock over which the gunboat had a moment before passed, becoming immovably fixed there.
As she ran down the coast the Huascar and the Union both pointed their bows more and more shoreward, as if to cut off the gunboat; and it began to look very much as though there was no hope for the Covadonga, when suddenly another rocket, blue this time, soared up from the monitor, and she described a wide circle seaward once more, her consort following her example.
As the work on the Covadonga would, it was expected, occupy at least a fortnight, Jim Douglas applied to Commander Condell for leave to go ashore occasionally, that he might explore the quaint old town, which dated back to a period long anterior to the conquest of Peru by Pizarro and his band of adventurers.
From the hour when Pelayo, the first of the Asturian kings, successfully met and repulsed the hitherto victorious Moors in his rocky fortress of Covadonga, to the day when Boabdil the Unlucky saw for the last time through streaming tears the vermilion towers of Alhambra crowned with the banner of the cross, there was not a year of peace in Spain. No other nation has had such an experience.
But she nevertheless came on, unchecked, and a few minutes later ranged up, broadside on to the Covadonga, at a distance of about seven hundred yards, when the action at once became close and fierce. In less than a minute the Chilian gunboat had her mizzen-mast shot away close to the deck, her funnel riddled by machine-gun bullets, and every man not under cover killed.
As the door closed behind them Montt shivered, although the night was oppressively hot, and Jim could have sworn that he heard the sound of an animal's pads retreating down the passage behind them. The two men swiftly pulled themselves together, however, and started off for the Covadonga, which they reached just as the first faint flush of dawn made its appearance in the eastern sky.
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